The present disclosure generally relates to eye tracking, and specifically relates to using dense structured light patterns for eye tracking.
Eye tracking refers to the process of detecting the direction of a user's gaze, which may comprise detecting an orientation of an eye in 3-dimensional (3D) space. Eye tracking in the context of headsets used in, e.g., virtual reality and/or augmented reality applications can be an important feature. Conventional systems commonly use a small number of light sources (e.g., ˜8) that emit light which is reflected by the eye, and a camera is used to image the reflection of the light sources from the eye. An orientation of the eye is determined using the captured images. But, the small number of light sources results in a limited model of the eye with a lot of inaccuracies. Moreover, conventional eye tracking systems fail to account for the reflected light from the iris that is refracted by the cornea, and instead simply assume all captured light is a reflection from the cornea.